Pipeline contract agreed with help from Minters, Freehills

FREEHILLS AND Minter Ellison helped in-house counsel manage the signing of a new long-term contract to transport gas from Queensland to Adelaide and Sydney.Epi

FREEHILLS AND Minter Ellison helped in-house counsel manage the signing of a new long-term contract to transport gas from Queensland to Adelaide and Sydney.

Epic Energy signed the contract with AGL earlier this month, which will see a new 180-kilometre Queensland to South Australia/NSW Link (QSN), built at a cost of around $140 million, to pump gas from South East Queensland.

Epic’s general counsel and company secretary Joanna Buck said Minter Ellison partner Mitzi Gilligan had ably assisted her with the transaction.

“The internal and external lawyers worked well together and maintained a commercial focus, enabling the transaction to proceed smoothly,” she said.

AGL was represented by a Freehills’ partner in Perth, Rob Merrick. AGL’s in-house counsel working on the transaction were Melanie Mistilis and John Fitzgerald.

QSN will join Epic’s South West Queensland Pipeline and Epic’s Moomba to Adelaide Pipeline, as well as providing a delivery point onto the Moomba to Sydney Pipeline, with first deliveries of the gas due in 2009.

“The contract between Epic and AGL is the most significant contracting event in Epic’s recent history,” said the company’s managing director Alan Freer.

“Over time, the QSN Link will help to generate significant cash flows from both of Epic’s eastern Australia pipelines.

Epic said it would also ensure the company’s pipelines would remain of “strategic value to the eastern Australian gas market” and reinforced its growth prospects.

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